Celebs Who Got Hitched Way Too Young (3 of 3)

Bo Derek and John Derek

Actress Bo Derek caused a huge scandal when she married at 18, to a man an incredible 30 years older than her.

She met her future husband, director John Derek, when he chose her to star in his film Fantasies, when she was only 16. That doesn’t sound dodgy at all then, right? He was married to actress Linda Evans at that time but fell in love with the teenager while they were filming on location in Greece.

Bo actually ended up not finishing high school, so she could remain in Europe with the older man, dodging statutory rape laws. How romantic. When she turned 18, she returned to California to marry. Surprisingly, it actually lasted a while and they pair remained married until John died in 1998.

Bo spoke to Interview about the marriage some years later and admitted that she felt terrible about meeting John while he was still married to another woman. She felt she did the wrong thing, and won’t ever forgive herself for stealing someone else’s man. Yet, in another interview, this one with Larry King, she described their marriage as “fantastic, we had so many things going against it, first and foremost his age, but then 25 years down the line it was clearly meant to be.” So, it appears she has mixed feelings about it all if she’s honest.

Milla Jovovich and Shawn Andrews

Actress Milla Jovovich was only 16 when she got hitched to Dazed and Confused co-star Shawn Andrews. That’s the name of the show they were in, not a description, in case you were wondering.

Director Richard Linklater claimed that the pair were married for about a month before Milla’s mother stepped in and insisted on an annulment, due to her daughter’s tender age. In an interview with The Daily Mail some time later in 2011, Jovovich said she had ran off as a romantic gesture to Vegas to marry Andrews, but also as a bit of an F you to her mom. “I wanted to prove a point,” she said. Which, it appears, was a failure then, if it was mommy who cleaned the whole thing up within a month.

Jovovich also said, strangely, that she wanted a bank card. “I was a big girl,” she said, “and I wanted to properly establish myself in adulthood. I was working like an adult and being treated like an adult by everyone but my mom.” She admitted it wasn’t really about being in love, but more trying to prove a point to the world. A point well made, we think…

Olivia Wilde and Tao Ruspoli

Olivia Wilde was only 18 when she eloped with Tao Ruspoli in 2003. To be fair, who wouldn’t want to run away with an Italian prince? Ruspoli’s family owns Rome’s Palazzo Ruspoli, if People are to be believed.

The couple spent a happy eight years together before the divorce came this time, in the spring of 2011. Then the truth came tumbling out, as usual in these cases. Wilde said they had been crazy to get married in the first place. However, she said they’d done so because they were head over heels in love and it made them happy at the time. To be fair, eight years of happiness is probably worth the pain of a divorce, we reckon.

Wilde said it was incredibly difficult leaving someone with whom she had spend most of her 20s, such an important part of anyone’s life. Wilde described the day she knew the divorce was on the horizon as “the worst of her life” in her interview on The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet. She said she was “terrified” of leaving Ruspoli, which is understandable. Imagine that transition from princess to pauper again. Truly frightening.